Africa’s scam economy is becoming more organised, automated and sophisticated.

What was once the occasional fraudulent SMS has evolved into smishing, vishing, identity theft, business impersonation, SIM-swap-enabled account takeovers, AI-generated identity documents and deepfake voice calls.

I moderated a discussion recorded at the TARS 2026 Telecom Africa Revenue Assurance & Fraud Management Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, on the 13th May 2026 titled:

Protecting the Customer: Scam Typologies, Operator Responsibilities & Fraud Awareness in Africa

The panel brought together:

• Ann Khambo - Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management Manager, Airtel Money, Airtel Kenya
• Ogochukwu (Ogo) Onwuzurike - Country Manager, Nigeria, Truecaller
• Mieraf T. Birhane - Executive Head of Fraud Management, Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia

The discussion examines how customer-facing fraud is changing across African telecom and mobile-money markets, why social engineering remains such an effective attack vector, and why operators can no longer regard themselves as neutral pipes when their networks, brands and identity systems are being exploited.

Mieraf shares insights from Ethiopia’s evolving fraud landscape, including smishing, account takeover, subscription fraud and commission-related abuse. She also describes a striking case in which fraudsters used makeup and physical impersonation to attempt fraudulent SIM swaps—an incident detected because the agent involved had received practical fraud training.

Ann explores identity theft, including situations where innocent customers may not know their photographs or personal information have been used to register SIM cards or commit fraud. She also explains why GSM and mobile-money fraud must be analyzed together using KYC, voice, SMS, location, SIM, device and transaction data.

Ogo introduces the “machine era of spam and fraud.” According to the figures shared during the panel, Truecaller intercepted approximately 68 billion spam and fraud calls in 2025, compared with approximately 37.8 billion in 2021. She explains how AI and automation are helping fraudsters scale while excessive calls and messages from legitimate organisations are also eroding trust in phone-based communication.

Key Themes:

• Smishing, vishing and social engineering
• Identity theft and fraudulent SIM registration
• SIM-swap-enabled account takeover
• Business impersonation and investment scams
• Real-time detection, analytics and machine learning
• Internal fraud and insider risk
• Anti-fraud by design
• Operator responsibility and customer protection
• Cross-industry collaboration

Time Stamps

00:00 Intro music

00:12 Africa’s scam operations have industrialised

04:09 What keeps fraud leaders awake at night?

04:44 Ethiopia’s evolving fraud landscape

08:43 Identity theft and the innocent customer

10:54 The human factor in customer-facing fraud

11:24 Why operators must take greater responsibility

13:43 The machine era of spam and fraud

18:05 AI call scanning and verified business communication

19:40 Smishing and sophisticated account takeover in Ethiopia

23:21 Data-driven controls for mobile-money fraud

24:05 Connecting GSM and mobile-money fraud

27:52 Business impersonation, investment scams and credibility engineering

30:49 Outro music

The central takeaway is that customer-facing fraud is no longer only a fraud-management or revenue-assurance issue. It is a customer-experience, brand-trust, financial-inclusion and digital-economy issue.

Protecting customers requires shared responsibility across telecom operators, mobile-money providers, banks, fintechs, platforms, regulators, agents, employees and customers.